Tuzulutlán: Regionalism, Political Imaginaries, and National Difference in Alta Verapaz, Guatemala

Guatemalan intellectuals in the 1920s frequently celebrated German immigration and the region of Alta Verapaz as they sought new models of development. Miguel Ángel Asturias, for example, was inspired by the new, “robust” German-Q’eqchi’ race in Alta Verapaz and proposed racial whitening through the colonization of Guatemala with immigrants from Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands as solution to Guatemala’s failure to become a nation. By the 1930s, Alta Verapaz was dubbed Guatemala’s “Little Germany.”  The rise of German National Socialism in the 1930s and growing nationalist sentiments fostered a new regional identity based not on German immigrants and mestizaje, but the region’s history of resistance to Spanish conquistadores. Celebrated as Tuzulutlán (“Land of War”) for Mayas fierce resistance to Spanish conquistadores, Altaverapacence ladinos reconceived of Alta Verapaz as a space of resistance to foreign occupation and conquest and celebrated their Maya heritage. Yet, Mayas themselves consistently forged political imaginaries that challenged either regional ascriptions of Little Germany or Tuzulutlán and remade the space of the region by constantly violating municipal and departmental boundaries. Drawing on these histories of conflicting regional identities, this paper analyzes how these regional histories negotiated and reimagined national narratives that had long celebrated European immigration.